


a lesson in empathy

by starryfuck



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Azumane Asahi/Nishinoya Yuu - Freeform, Gen, Lowercase, Pining Asahi, Second Person, Yearning, but don’t let that turn you away !!, jealous asahi, thinking about emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25992211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starryfuck/pseuds/starryfuck
Summary: ASANOYA WEEK 2020 DAY 2: jealousyit is easy to want touch. to yearn for it, to ache for it. but it is not easy to untangle yourself from the messy spiderweb that jealousy and fear command you must be caught in.a kettle boils.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16
Collections: Asanoya Week 2020





	a lesson in empathy

**Author's Note:**

> MY PROCRASTINATION KNOWS NO BOUNDS

you are scared of making mistakes.

you know that they’re important in getting better, but understanding the value of a concept doesn’t mean the acceptance of it.

fear clutches your heart in its fist. your throat and tongue fail to work and you find that you never have the words to ask for it back. 

sometimes it feels like the world is crumbling. 

your gut twists, more often than not. tightness like a kettle on the verge of whistling and its shriek shatters glass that you don’t want to clean up so you stand there, waiting for the pitch of the steady soft exhale to tug itself higher and you’re just waiting, waiting for it to be over. waiting, impatience on the horizon of your nervous pulse on your wrist under your thumb pressing down and you wonder—

when did you let the smallest things become overwhelming?

you turn off the kettle before it whistles. 

hair falls into your face, more often than not. daichi once asked why you just let it grow longer. maybe you’d look handsome with it short, who knows if you don’t do it? 

you said it was stylish.

what you didn’t say was that you hoped noya would run his hands through it. pull and tug and twist and... touch.

you know touch wasn’t the only way to feel close to a person, but intimacy in the link of fingers and the press of palm against cheek to bring lips against lips was something uncommon, at least for you. 

you are scared of being stagnant.

although you know, all too well, how your feet get rooted in coarse dirt too easily. 

you wish you were more like him.

him with his wild hair and careless attitude. as fast as the wind and as loud as your own heartbeat in your throat as he makes his presence known with a shout. 

and you wish, that maybe, you could be as close to him as tanaka was. 

it was always noya and tanaka.

you saw the way noya looked at him, and you couldn’t help but want your positions to be reversed. 

what if it was noya and you?

would the stars shine twice as brightly, or would they dull down to the same colour of the sky? would that feeling in the pit of your stomach disappear when you looked at tanaka with something like irritation? you hid it, of course. tanaka deserved nothing less than the best. 

but it was that twist in your gut. 

the twitch of your lip in contempt, knowing its source was from an irrelevant thought, feeling, desire, made you queasy and you wished that it would just go because you’re supposed to be the strong one, the kind one, and when you are neither strong nor kind, then who are you? 

someone jealous, maybe.

and you do not want to be someone jealous.

you sit in the same place in the classroom as you did yesterday, and the day before. you bring the same uniform. you play the same position. 

everyone moves with a fearlessness you lack and your head spins with the threat of a headache that would leave crevasses and canyons along your thoughts, a safety risk to your anxiety that feeds off the tumbling, cascading, building, rush of everything, everything.

you are scared of feeling.

and jealousy is not a good feeling.

but...you are not your feelings. 

you are not the fear that swells up behind your eyes as tears and you are not the incessant push of heart against ribcage, threatening to split your torso open and you are not and never will be defined by your ability to hide the garden that lives in the cavity of your chest that grows past thorns and asks you, quietly:

will you let me live?

breathe in the way that makes you feel like you are more than just... existing?

the whistle of the kettle never shattered glass.

but still, it feels like a mistake to be jealous.

and you are scared of making mistakes.

a nervous press of your thumb against pulse point. 

you are alive and there is no such thing as the eradication of imperfection and the non-existence of human error. 

the whistle of the kettle signalled warmth. 

**Author's Note:**

> you leave kudos and a comment 😏😏


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